Getting my kids to eat outrageously healthy things, and to establish outrageously healthy eating habits for the rest of their lives, is a key goal of my CSA veggie endeavor.
My kids have always been good about eating vegetables, in part because they often have little other choice. But I’ve also worked hard to bring to the vegetables in my house the kind of marketing usually reserved for fast-food meals and sugary snacks. See, for example, “Fraggle Toast” and “Shrek Shake.” I also hide veggies when necessary. See, for example, Cauliflower, Parsnip, and Potato Mash.
This kind of creativity has paid off. But sometimes it’s unnecessary.
My three-year-old LOVES to receive our CSA deliveries. When we arrive home from school, she spots the red cooler outside our garage before we’ve even turned into the driveway. She loves to open the cooler carefully, unzip the bag daintily, and then delight in what she finds.
“[Gasps in shock] Mama, look! Look at all the beautiful vegetables the farmer brought for us!”
Her pure joy at receiving the CSA vegetables means that there’s no need for further marketing. It’s like Santa Clause comes every single week. She can hardly contain herself as we carry the vegetables upstairs to the kitchen.
This week, straight from our delivery bag, she picked her own leaf of romaine lettuce, her own leaf of Swiss chard, her own carrot, and her own radish. She washed the vegetables herself, and then stood by while I chopped them for her (carrot greens and radish greens included!), so that she could put them in a bowl and mix them up herself. We added olive oil and vinegar.
She ate almost the whole bowl, along with whole-wheat pasta with tomato sauce, and a cup of milk.
Who needs fancy marketing or hidden veggies?!
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